Team Reps

Hello Polyglots! We’ve been working the past couple of months on communication between contributor groups to make WordPress a better community, and it’s time for your group to elect a couple of team reps to communicate on behalf of translators. We appointed Zé as the acting team rep for polyglots when we started, since he’s the person who seemed best able to fill the role until the next vote came around. Zé can continue on as team rep if elected, but you also need a 2nd rep.

These folks will be responsible for reporting on the progress of the group to the other team reps via weekly updates, as well as occasional chats and such. If you haven’t seen the spiel on one of the other team blogs about how team reps/voting/terms work, the longer explanation is after the jump.

Note: It should be folks who want the responsibility. Anyone interested in being a polyglots team rep should leave a comment saying as much so people know who they can/should vote for. Voting is open until December 15, and results will be posted here once voting closes.

Team Rep Voting Backstory and Detail

Earlier this year, we took a stab at creating a structure for contributor group communication, based on identifying working groups and letting each group elect team reps. All the teams were represented at the community summit at the end of October, which was a huge step forward in recognizing contributors in areas other than core. That said, once all the reps were together, one of the things we talked about was the idea of team reps, responsibilities, and expectations. As a result, it’s time for a bit of an update there.

Moving forward, each contributor group will have two team reps. We’ll have voting to choose team reps every six months. The idea is that one person will take the lead for the first half of the term with the other person acting as a backup rep, then about halfway through, they’ll swap roles. This way, there’s always someone ramping up with more responsibility, and someone who’s been there still around to lend a guiding hand, without anyone having to make too significant of a time commitment. If one new person takes on team rep responsibilities with each election, then it will be a constant cycle of mentoring people into more responsible roles, which is better for the project long-term than keeping all the responsibility in the hands of a few indefinitely.

It’s important to understand that “team rep” is a role that handles communication (namely contributor wrangling and posting weekly updates on the team’s activity and plans); it is not called “team lead” for a reason. While the people elected as team reps will generally come from the pool of folks that people think of as the experienced leaders, remember that the team rep role is designed to change hands regularly. For example, if in 6 months Ipstenu was ready to step back from being the support team rep, that would not reduce her leadership role on the support team, it would just mean she wasn’t responsible for team rep duties anymore.

All teams are participating in this round of elections, but you don’t have to choose all new people as team reps. You’re welcome to vote for Zé to continue in one of the spots. One thing to be sure of is that anyone you vote for is actually interested in having the team rep responsibilities until the next round of voting in June; this role has a time commitment attached to it, and if a team rep fails to meet that commitment (not posting the weekly updates, for example) they will be removed from the role. To that end, it would probably help for anyone who wants to be in the running to declare their interest in the comments.